Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be returning to the early films of Toei Doga, as we explore their adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Released two years after the beautiful landmark that was The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, Gulliver echoes the transition in art design philosophy that was initiated by Little Prince, though it pulls back somewhat from the clean geometric designs and impressionist background art of its predecessor.
Toei Doga’s artists were stretched thin across multiple productions throughout this era, so it’s little surprise that there’s a touch less continuity or artistic evolution than you’d expect across these films. Nonetheless, many of Toei’s early masters are still present on key animation, including the incomparable Yasuji Mori and the ascendant Yasuo Otsuka.
Mori has essentially been the emotional backbone of Toei’s film animation right from the start, lending an intimacy of character acting to their fantastical fables that grounds them in relatable human expressions, while Otsuka had already more than proven himself through his collaboration in animating the preposterously ambitious final battle with Little Prince’s titular dragon. Meanwhile, an ambitious young upstart named Hayao Miyazaki would here swiftly jump from in-betweening to concepting, as the relationships that would inform Takahata’s approaching Horus continued to be forged. Scanning across Gulliver’s contributors, you’ll see names that reach back to the beginning of Toei’s film animation and forward to the Masterpiece Theater works and Ghibli beyond, a human timeline of the personal bonds that made anime’s early works so magnificent, in spite of the immense responsibilities heaped on each individual artist. Let’s slot one more piece into this historical puzzle, as we explore the adventures of Gulliver and his companions!